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الاتحاد العام اللاجئين العراقيين
INTERNATIONAL
FEDERATION OF IRAQI
REFUGEES
Dear friends,
We
are writing to ask you to support our appeal
against the underhand methods being used by
the Home Office to pressure large numbers of
Iraqi Kurds to return to Iraq / South
Kurdistan.
For
some time the Home Office has been looking
for ways to return to Iraq people to whom it
has refused protection. Widespread protest
and a warning by a senior immigration judge
prevented them from starting forced removals
in August as they had planned. Now even
though Iraq is clearly still dangerous and
getting more so, the Home Office are trying
to make people sign letters agreeing that
they will return to Iraq, in return for
which, until they go, they can continue to
get Section 4 support. (This is “hard case
support” given to some people whose benefit
was removed when their asylum claim was
rejected). Those who refuse to sign the
letter are losing their s.4 benefit and
their accommodation. Fifty people per week
are getting this letter and more and more
people are being made homeless all the time.
Often many people are living in one room
because several friends have already been
made destitute, and if the one person who
still has accommodation loses it, they are
all out on the street.
This
is yet another completely outrageous and
unjustified attack by the Home Office on
often vulnerable individuals who should have
been given protection here, and they must
not be allowed to get away with it. People
have been endlessly humiliated, often for
some years, by the Home Office, the courts
and NASS. Now the Home Office is trying to
drive them out of the country with the
threat of destitution and homelessness. It
is using the International Organisation of
Migration to assist in coercing people to go
back to Iraq, while pretending that the
returns are “voluntary”, which is just not
true in any normal sense of the word.
Please
help in any way you can – sign our appeal,
replying to; circulate it to other people;
contact your MP about the matter; get in
touch with International Federation of Iraqi
Refugees if you belong to an organisation
that might be able to help accommodate and
support destitute and homeless asylum
seekers; make donations (cheques payable to
Federation of Iraqi Refugees and send
it to PO Box 1575
ILFORD IG1 3BZ please).
IFIR
is hoping to organise a countrywide speaking
tour soon, together with other refugee
organisations, to offer solidarity to asylum
seekers more generally. Please contact us if
you would like to be involved, for example
by helping set up a public meeting in your
town.
Thank
you very much for your support,
Yours
sincerely,
d.jamal@ntlworld.com
Tel:/
077347 04742
Burhan
Fatah
burhanfatah@aol.com
Tel:/
07866757213
Office
Tell/ 0161 234 2784
Jasim
Ghafur
jasm_rg@yahoo.co.uk
Tel:/
07739338178
Appeal
We
demand that the Home Office
-
Takes note of the 3 November court
decision on s.55 which said
“the imminent prospect of having to
sleep in the street or being unable to
satisfy the most basic requirements of
hygiene, would ordinarily amount to
inhuman or degrading treatment within
art 3 of the
European Convention on Human Rights.”
-
stops putting unfair pressure through
the threat of destitution on Iraqi
asylum seekers who have made the
judgement that it is not safe for them
to go back;
-
protects and accepts as political
refugees asylum seekers from Iraq who
have been refused protection so far;
-
Allows them to work or restores the
right to decent accommodation and normal
levels of support to any who cannot
work.
www.federasion.org
Tel:00447734704742 |